In the fall of 1978, I was taken to Nicopolis by the school. I got to spend a year in Greece with the American School of Classical Studies in Athens. Why is that?īarry Strauss: I was incredibly lucky when I was a graduate student. The war between Antony and Octavian involved diplomacy, information warfare-from propaganda to what we now call fake news-economic and financial competition, as well as all of the human emotions: love, hate, and jealousy, not least among them."Īrs Technica: You specialize in ancient military history, but you seem to have a particular fascination for this moment in Roman history-and especially this particular battle. "It was the climax of a six-month campaign of engagements on land and sea. "Actium was a great battle, but it did not stand alone," Strauss writes in his introduction. Civil war inevitably broke out ( the third and last of the Roman Republic), with the young and relatively inexperienced Octavian on one side and Antony and Cleopatra (supported by 40 percent of the Roman Senate) on the other. Meanwhile, Antony married Caesar's former lover, Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, and sought to dominate Rome from there. Octavian successfully pushed Lepidus into exile in 36 BCE, claiming the latter's provinces for himself. The following year, Caesar's adopted son, Octavian, formed the Second Triumvirate with Mark Antony and Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.Īlas, the Second Triumvirate proved to be highly unstable, due in large part to the bitter rivalry between Octavian and Antony. Roman general and statesman Julius Caesar was famously stabbed to death at the Curia of Pompey on the ides of March in 44 BCE. The senators who killed him thought assassination was the only way to preserve the republic, but the murder ultimately led to the republic's collapse. This is a particularly dramatic historical period that inspired two separate historical plays by William Shakespeare. Further Reading Confirmed: Curia of Pompey, where Julius Caesar was killed, was built in three phases
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